OPINION
Follow UsPerhaps when Ambati Rayudu woke up on Monday, he would have dreamt of signing off in style, securing the ‘Player of the Match’ award by striking a fifty. The same fantasy might have even involved him envisioning hitting the winning runs, landing CSK their fifth IPL title.
Beautiful as it would have been, though, such an ending wouldn’t have been poetic. For the simple reason of it being ‘out of character’ for Rayudu’s IPL career.
On Monday, Rayudu’s final knock as an IPL player lasted all of 8 balls.
Not what he’d have wanted, but the sporting gods had successfully done it: they’d somehow conjured up the perfect script imaginable, giving Rayudu arguably the best-ever character arc witnessed in the IPL.
The biggest team man, the forever silent warrior, bid goodbye to his career lifting the title for a record sixth time, playing a knock that embodied his IPL career, and everything he, as a player, was all about: selflessness and adaptability.
Years ago, Harsha Bhogle on air uttered an iconic line while talking about the sheer unselfishness of Rahul Dravid.
"Ask him to walk on water and he'll ask, 'how many kilometres"? said Harsha, imaginatively highlighting the extent to which Dravid was always willing to go for the team's sake.
Rayudu is no different.
In his eight seasons with Mumbai Indians, Rayudu batted in seven different positions. He started off as a lower middle-order batter in 2010 before being promoted to No.3 in 2011. He started the 2012 season at No.4 but ended it as a finisher, predominantly batting at No.5 and No.6.
He was moved up and down the order for the next three seasons before ultimately finishing his MI career batting at No.3 and No.4.
A move to Chennai Super Kings (CSK) ensued in 2018 and in his maiden season — which was spectacular, 602 runs at a SR of nearly 150 — he was asked to bat at three different positions.
But though Rayudu found enormous success opening the batting in 2018 — a role he’d done only once in his seven seasons at Mumbai — striking 396 runs at 44/147, the 2019 season saw him get moved to No.4 after just four innings to accommodate Faf du Plessis.
Between 2020 and 2023, he batted eight times at No.3, 18 times at No.4, 20 times at No.5 and 10 times at No.6 or below.
Amidst all this, he also kept wickets not once, not twice, but 20 times between 2010 and 2019, across franchises.
Stability is everything in T20 cricket, and yet in Rayudu’s dictionary, there’s been no space for the term.
In most cases, a player being shuffled up and down the order is a clear sign of teams struggling to find the ideal role to get the best out of the individual but Rayudu is an outlier.
He finds himself performing different roles every other season because his adaptability is obscenely good. His sides know that he can pull off any role without a hitch.
Every startup in India has a person who has their feet dipped in every department because of their efficiency. Rayudu is that person. A victim of his own success.
The constant chopping and changing has meant that Rayudu’s numbers have taken a hit. He hangs his boots with his overall career average of just over 28. Not an impressive strike rate either: 127.54.
But the qualities he possesses as a batter, both tangible and intangible, have made his — at times — fluctuating numbers a matter of trivial concern for his franchises.
If Rayudu was only as good as his overall numbers suggest — 28.23 / 127.54 — he would not have played exclusively for the two most successful franchises in the competition. They, too, would not have trusted him year after year, season after season, putting immeasurable faith.
Both CSK and MI backed him to the hilt because they knew Rayudu was a player worth investing in.
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CSK fans, over the years, have learnt time and again that Dhoni and the management’s judgment is almost always right, and the ‘process’ never lets them down. Case in point Rayudu himself in 2021.
Several CSK fans wanted Rayudu gone for good after back-to-back poor seasons, but the right-hander ended up playing a huge part in the Super Kings winning IPL 2021, batting more aggressively than ever.
But despite the Rayudu redemption arc of 2021, the fans were still unwilling to give Dhoni and the management the benefit of doubt this season regarding the 37-year-old.
The Super Kings made the playoffs as the second-placed side, but many fans wanted Rayudu gone.
The frustration was understandable.
When there’s a 37-year-old ‘impact sub’ making no impact in 14 games coming on the back of a poor 2022 season, frustration ought to build amongst the fans.
There was logic in the argument that, when it came to Rayudu, CSK were ‘CSK-ing for the sake of CSK-ing’.
Clearly, though, Dhoni and the management knew something that the fans and the general public did not.
For come the playoffs, the world witnessed a different Rayudu altogether: 17 balls, 36 runs, three sixes, two match-winning cameos.
One of the cameos being a Hall of Fame, title-winning one, in which he took down the opponent’s best bowler with his side having their backs against the wall.
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It is debatable as to whether CSK won the Qualifier 1 and the final *only* because of Rayudu’s cameos. But know this: they would certainly have lost both encounters without the 37-year-old doing what he did.
That way, Rayudu’s final two games in a CSK shirt were a microcosm of his IPL career, wherein he was indispensable though it seldom seemed that way.
Fitting, then, that Rayudu signed off by playing the most Rayudu knock of all time in the most Rayudu season of all time.
He can indeed smile for the rest of his life, for a perfect end like this is rare, even in books and movies.
